this must be the place....goin strong , yeah baby!!!

Saturday, December 20, 2008

...to fuck around with Pforks list. "love em or hate em" (JUST KIDDING), no but seriously, lets have a little fun. Last year (07) was almost painfully better for music than this one (as far as mainstream indie releases), and I think lists like these get way worse in down years, because you end up having to dig to fill your list with records that aren't totally awesome, giving music writers a chance to expose just how little they actually know about music ...

(also...and this could be a seperate post. I can't say I've listened to 50 albums that came out in 2008 yet. not in parts and certainly not the whole ones. Why would I? Who does that? Do musicians do that, or only music writers? And I had a job for 3 months where I was listening to music on headphones the whole time. Maybe I'm just more of a back cataloguer than most. On the plus side, all this music now exists for me to back cataloge later. But yeah, listening habits of musicians vs. critics. Something to think about.)

#1: Fleet Foxes- Having heard it once, I begrudgingly acknowledge that this record isn't as bad as having CBS show the Duke-Xavier basketball game on the West Coast and Hawaii instead of Texas-Michigan State. This is the record that made "My Morning Jacket" obsolete, as if that's what we really needed in 2008. Their video with the goats made me think of The Incredible String Band documentary I saw in Athens this year. I think at some point I will really dig the music of Fleet Foxes, but there is a certain amount of "I can't believe these goddamn hippies ever got away with this," that I can't unattach from them right now. In the wise words of Eric Cartman "Fuckin hippies."

#2 Portishead: I assume this is an awful record, but I don't really like Portishead

#3 No Age: I havent been there, but I am starting to assume that The Smell scene is the most overrated thing going on in American music. I saw these guys at SXSW a couple years ago at Long Branch and found them annoying, boring and too loud for the space. But thats cool over SXSW! Being too loud is rock and roll! Haven't heard the record, have no desire to, but maybe one day.

#5 Deerhunter: Been listening to this a lot. I think its awesome for the moment, but not as good as the last one. I have specific complaints with it which I think I am going to dedicate an entire post to later. Basically I think the production gets a little cutesy at times. A little too many cerebral touches. But there is a lot a lot to like about this record and this band right now IMO. I haven't really thoroughly listened to Weird Era Continued yet, but there are some good tracks on there, and the different production is welcome.

#6 TV on the Radio: Heard it briefly and thought it sounded ultra cool, which is the first time I've really thought that about TVotR since their very first EP. Still, haven't really had a chance to listen to it. Strongly dislike the album art.

#7 Vampire Weekend: Apparently there are no apologists at Pfork. I look forward to ripping into this band for months again when their next hugely successful album comes out.

#8 M83: tried to like em, never did. Baffled by this "pick"

#9 Hercules and Love Affair: cool record...so dense!!! whoa this record is super dense. I feel like I had to listen to it a billion times before I started just enjoying it on a base level.

#16 Vivian Girls-still haven't heard the full length, but I'm pretty on board with this band. I've been listening to The Shop Assistants on the beach and I have some things to say about how Vivian Girls are way better, at least their best tracks.

#29 The Hold Steady: oh my god, get over it. This band has gotten worse with every record. I liked their first one.

#34 Arthur Russell: I like that they included this with "New Albums" because it basically is. Probably could have been higher as long as they are including it.

#36 Wale: We listened to this in Chicago when visiting Robert Liu. I'm sure other people listened to it other times. Cool record.

#46 Beach House: The context in which I first liked this record is too embarrassing to go into detail about. I don't even know...is Gila on this record? Research says yes. That is an amazing song. Maybe my song of the year as far as "what was the best song of 2008". That song is unreal. I haven't even listened to this whole record, but I can tell you it is way underrated at #46

#48 High Places: That song that is like "I was floored, I was floored" is pretty cool. Pretty neat textures. That said, probably the most dissapointing live show I saw this year, as judged by band I thought was gonna be most awesome but then sucked.

#50 Ponytail: This was one of the best bands I saw this year (over SXSW). They are really coming together. It was my second time seeing them, and the first was marred by this feeling of "those guys are just ripping off Ecstatic Sunshine!!" Well, turns out they shared a member, and Ecstatic Sunshine no longer sounds like that, so its all them. The thing that bugged me the first time is Ponytail seemed like sort of all over the place, but with no glue holding the thing together. Like "whoa, that was a cool drumbeat" but then it would only go on for 8 measures and he would switch to something totally random and you would just think they hit the awesomeness by accident. But the second time I saw them there was way more of that "glue" with no sacrificing of the . Haven't heard the record.

Hon Mention: Why weren't The Dodos in the Top 50? Honestly I don't get it. That's the only record here I really have an opinion about

09 April 2009 - DJs Monte King (SF), Noggin (Texas), Steinunn (Reykjavik) and Leopold (Berlin) @ the Stanford CoHo 7-9 and 10-12...bookending a guest discussion and live mixtape airing with a member of the Kronos Quartet